Giant Panda, Electric Laser

A week or two ago, just for shits n' giggles, I watched the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards--a rather ironic spectacle, considering that MTV has virtually nothing to do with music anymore--and I came away from the experience with a splitting headache and a meager handful of insights:

1. Katy Perry is ridiculously hot.
2. Russel Brand is a colossal douche.
3. Goth fashion has now become positively mainstream (see Rihanna's opening performance of "Disturbia" to see what I'm talking about).
And 4. Popular hip-hop artists like TI (and T-Pain and T-whatever), Young Jeezy, and Lil' Wayne demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt the old adage that crap always floats to the top. If these schmucks are the forefront of hip-hop, then hip-hop is truly a played-out, moribund art form. One we should just take out behind the shed and...well, put it out of its our misery.

Fortunately, they're not. Despite what many contemporary rappers will tell you, making lots of money, banging lots of women, and selling a few million ringtone versions of your "hit" singles does not equal success in The Game. As all the best emcees know, wine, women, and song are transitory things that don't count for much in the long run. True success in The Game comes in delivering music so full of talent that listeners--even those who generally don't dig a lot of hip-hop--will be talking about it, praising it, analyzing it, and being inspired by it long after the release parties have ended and the singles have disappeared from the charts. And if people aren't talking about Giant Panda's (MySpace) second full-length album Electric Laser looooooong into the future, I'm going to be surprised and, more importantly, appalled.

Giant Panda are an international, interracial crew of emcees currently gettin' bizzy in Los Angeles. Founders Newman and Maanumental are both originally from Seattle, but the trio's third element, Chikaramanga, hails from Tokyo and brings a very distinctive Asian flavor to the group with rapidfire flows in both Japanese and English. But Chikaramanga is but a single lion in the lyrical Voltron that is Giant Panda: all members have strong individual talents that combine to create a rap kaiju that truly deserves to bust out of the independent rap scene like Godzilla escaping from Monster Island to stomp the bling-encrusted dullards who currently "rule" hip-hop into the  dirt. But thanks to the crew's relationship with LA's legendary People Under The Stairs (MySpace)--Chikaramanga and P.U.T.S.' Thes One are two of the minds behind Tres Records, one of the hottest independent hip-hop labels Out There and current home of Giant Panda--the black-and-white behemoth from both sides of the Pacific could very well be poised to rise to stardom with Electric Laser just as Atmosphere finally began gathering widespread love with their magnum opus When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold.

Giant Panda aren't quite as "serious" as Atmosphere, whose lyrics have always dealt with tough issues with a bare-souled honesty rarely spotted in rap, but that doesn't mean that Giant Panda can't handle deep subjects. They just tend to focus more on the fun, oldskool block-party aspect of hip-hop. With song titles like "Laser Beam (Scotty's Theme)," "Precise Calculator," and "Do The Robot In Cyberspace," the Pandas are clearly proud of their nerdy side, but though their work features samples from Tron and Real Genius and lyrically touches on everything from robotics to superheroes, they aren't nerdcore--which means they will definitely appeal to geeks like me while not limiting their appeal only to geeks. Their funky oldskool beats and witty rhymes will immediately catch the ear of anyone with a taste for off-the-wall rappers like the Fu-Schnickens, Digable Planets, The Beastie Boys and Del The Funky Homosapien, and their slightly retro sound will thrill jaded hip-hop fans who long for the glory days of the genre's origins. But Newman, Maanumental, and Chikaramanga are not here to celebrate the past, but to use that oldskool sound to create a wormhole to the future, and they've brought back a truckload of asskickin' jams to prove that hip-hop will long continue to be a vibrant underground sensation that can absorb any and all cultural influences and still remain true to its roots.

So let's take a look at the tracks themselves, shall we? After the obligatory little intro piece, "Justin Case" explodes with an early-'90s beat, a groovy horn hook full of bootyrockin' '70s-funk flavor, and the instantly catchy chant, "Just in case you didn't know, here we go!" This song introduces the crew's three rappers and encapsulates the essence of Giant Panda perfectly. Newman and Maanumental are skillful emcees with rapid deliveries that'll have you waving your hands in the air in seconds. And even though I didn't understand a single word of Chikaramanga's Japanese flow, the energy of his delivery and rhymes keeps the jam alive even when you  might not be able to follow the lyrics. The group's B-boy stylings are in full effect on "Speakers Pop," whose synths and beats and rhymes will demand you turn up your speakers to the top notch so you can "let it bump-bump, let it knock-knock." Somewhere in LA, right now, someone is breakdancing to this song atop a flattened refrigerator box on a streetcorner. I guarantee it. "Laser Ray" is a bitchin' superhero tale and "Precise Calculator" is dedicated entirely to Chikaramanga and his numerically-precise but ultrafunky Japanese/English flow. "Cinemax" is a hilariously swanky celebration of watching softcore pr0n on Skinemax, as we all used to call it back in the day, with your girl in the hope that it might inspire her to give you a little somethin'-somethin', and "Do The Robot in Cyberspace" is...well, if you even have to ask yourself what that means, then you can just go back to your R. Kelly and your Souljah Boy.

But Giant Panda do tackle serious topics occasionally in their rhymes. "Same Old Shit" catalogues the everpresent, inescapable forms of bullshit that make life miserable, and "Pops" is a touching--if extraordinarily danceable--exploration of gay parenting and the manifest stupidity of thinking that gay people can't raise children just as well as straight folks.

All in all, this is a bright, blazing, electric laser of an album that is guaranteed to bring some neon to even the grayest day and will vaporize any of those overblinged lotharios who think they've got the rap world in a chokehold. If they step to Giant Panda, they're going to find themselves reduced to sad little piles of ash.